Don’t Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes

In the movies, on the big screen, we’re impressed by giant vistas.

The stunning old West, where cacti and cowboys roam, or a panorama of stars and planets as we float through the vacuum of space. These amazing landscapes look great in IMAX and okay on a big UHD screen– but they look like tiny, blurry garbage on your phone.

Which is okay because here on planet video, we’re more likely to be shooting people anyway. People are the subjects of most of our stories. Which makes them the star of most of our videos.

If people are the stars, their faces are what you want to stay focused on.  People communicate half of everything they’re saying with their mouths and the other half with their eyes.  If you’re too far away, you miss the eyes– and half the message.

No faces here, let alone eyes

Shot close enough to see their eyes

Think about the shifty lawyer on the talk show whose mouth proclaims his client innocent– but whose demeanor somehow makes you feel he isn’t. It’s in the lawyer’s eyes. Or in a drama, when she says, “Yes, of course I love you,” but you and the hero know she doesn’t—it’s the eyes again.

If you’ve got a 40-foot screen to project on, you can keep a person small in the frame and they’ll STILL be larger than life when you play your video back.  But the smaller your screen is, the bigger those faces need to be so that you can still get your story across to your audience. Where is your video going to play? How will the faces of your subjects look?

A good general guideline?  Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.

Want to see this tip in action?  Watch my book trailer here.

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